Wager's Drama of Conscience, Convention, and State Constitution

William Wager, the mid-sixteenth century moral dramatist, is typically dismissed as a Protestant propagandist, but I argue that his deployment of literary and performance conventions veils a critique of the emerging capitalist state and its middling Protestant officials. Attacking ambition in The Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art and Enough is As Good As a Feast, Wager calls for a turn to conscience. Through allusions to the Guernsey martyrdom, and his promotion of a casuistic weighing of things indifferent, he negotiates his own problematic contribution to the system and the dangers of writing polemical plays.